Hidden Treasures at the Lighthouse Festival, Port Dover
Hidden Treasures is the umbrella title for two extremely funny one-act plays by Norm Foster being presented by the Lighthouse Festival in Port Dover, Ontario. The plays in question are My Narrator and The Death of Me and they are well worth a trip to the shores of Lake Erie.
Like his newest play, A Woman’s Love List, the plays in Hidden Treasures exist in the realm of fantasy. Unencumbered by the need to depict real people in real circumstances, Foster’s comedic gift seems to take flight.
My Narrator imagines a world in which the voice in some people’s head is an actual person with a name and a mind of their own. For Lacy (Jennifer Dzialoszynski), an impoverished artist, that narrator is Barb (Melanie Janzen) who attempts to save her from getting involved with Miles (David Leyshon), a hapless if amiable doofus who can’t hold a job and lives in a dump.
When Lacy shares with Miles that she has a narrator, Miles is apparently inspired to get one of his own. So on their first date he is accompanied by Bob (Stephen Sparks), who tries to coach him in datesmanship.
Barb and Bob are not at all like the people for whom they narrate. They are older, almost parent-like, and possessed of the effortless good looks you see in tv commercial spokespeople for upscale products. Whether this is Foster’s idea or that of the director Jane Spence, it’s brilliant.
What is definitely Foster’s idea is that narrators can see, hear, and chat with other narrators. When Barb and Bob meet, sparks fly and before long they are hot and heavy in lust with one another.
All of this is lost on the mismatched couples who are their ostensible charges. In what may be the luck of the casting draw or a shrewd choice on Spence’s part, Miles towers over the diminutive Lacy, a visible representation of exactly how much they are not meant for each other.
In Foster’s made up world, the life of a narrator is not an easy one. Lacy has an annoying way of ignoring Barb’s sage advice. And Miles seems a lost cause. When Bob tries to turn Miles into a suave man about town, Miles just can’t pull it off.
“Tell her you’re going to take her somewhere more befitting a woman of her comportment.”
“Let me take you a place more fitting for a woman of your portliness.”
My Narrator is less of a play than it is an extended sketch but it has more than the usual quota of great Foster lines.
The Death of Me is a complete change of pace. John (Leyshon again, exhibiting none of the cluelessness of Miles) arrives in the afterlife to be greeted by the Angel of Death (Janzen). John is absolutely befuddled why he, having recently received a clean bill of health after a physical from his doctor, has died. Turns out it was an undiagnosed aneurysm.
This scene contains some of the funniest lines of the evening. John is flabbergasted when he is handed a sheaf of paperwork to fill out so he can be placed in a job.
“You mean I have to work?”
“Yeah.”
“Do I pay taxes?”
“No, this isn’t Hell.”
As the full reality of his situation sinks in he wails, “I died alone. No one to hear my last words.”
“You mean ‘Ah! Ooh! Eee!’ asks the Angel of Death who has an antic, not to say rather cruel sense of humour for which she never apologizes.
When John comments, “You’re pretty vindictive for an angel” she responds “Of Death! Angel of Death!”
Even so, she has something of a soft spot because she allows a once in a millennium exception to let John return to life for twelve hours to tie up the loose end of confronting his erstwhile fiancée Cassie (Dzialoszynski), who didn’t show up for their wedding.
That meeting doesn’t go all that well and is the one weak spot in the two plays. But Cassie’s casual remark that if you have enough time you can change your destiny gives John a great idea.
He returns to see his doctor (Sparks) and begs him to set him up with a surgeon for a second opinion. Proving that this is, indeed, a fantasy play, he gets an appointment for that afternoon.
I won’t give away the ending, although you might be able to guess at least part of it.
As with My Narrator, The Death of Me is more skit than play although it does tie up more neatly at the end.
But why quibble? Hidden Treasures is Norm Foster at his hilarious best and director Spence, who is also the Artistic Director of the Lighthouse Festival, has given him a superlative production.
Not only has she helped her actors deliver impressively distinct characterizations in each play (more on that later), but her attention to detail extends to touches like having the stagehands who handle the set changes in The Death of Me scurry about in black robes and hoods like little Grim Reapers.
Beckie Morris has contributed a colourful abstract set that works beautifully with both plays. I’ve seen a number of her sets at the Foster Festival and Drayton Entertainment and surely this is the best of the lot.
Alex Amini’s costumes are spot on, especially her smashing white pants suit for the Angel of Death, and Steve Lucas has lit it all quite nicely.
Of course it is the performers that the audience will most remember and Hidden Treasures is blessed with a terrific cast.
Janzen’s easy-going charm was on ample display in Foster’s Whit’s End at the Foster Festival last season, but here she is revealed as a superb comic actress who doesn’t let her leading lady looks get in the way. She is elegantly sexy as Barb the narrator and then raucously hilarious as the Angel of Death who clearly relishes the reaping of souls.
Sparks shines as the doctor in the second piece and Foster has given him a lot to work with. Most Canadian theatregoers (and not a few of their American cousins) will enjoy his bitchy rant about “specialists.”
Leyshon is especially effective as the goofy Miles in the first piece. It’s only when we see him as the more stable John in the second piece that we realize what an impressive piece of work his Miles was.
Foster has given Dzialoszynski the least to work with, but she carries it off well, especially as the clinically paranoid Cassie in The Death of Me.
In the barely remembered days of my youth, double bills of one act plays were quite frequently mounted in my home town of New York. They’re a rarity these days, except for the occasional “festival of one-acts,” which almost by definition feature the so-so work of neophyte playwrights. All the more reason to grab this chance to see these hidden treasures of Norm Foster.
Hidden Treasures continues at the Lighthouse Festival’s Port Dover Theatre through July 26, 2025. It then transfers to their Port Colborne location from July 30 to August 10, 2025. For more information and to purchase tickets visit the Lighthouse Festival website.
Footnote: Both of these plays were originally published in 2008 under the title “One-Actmanship.” It’s available in the United States at amazon.com and in Canada at amazon.ca.
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